When Zhang Ya hadn't appeared yet, the Shadow's feeling toward Chen Ge was merely disgust. After Zhang Ya showed up, that hatred deepened. At first he had planned to turn Chen Ge into his own shadow, but now all he wanted was to kill the person standing before him.
"An obsession can't leave its anchoring object. A ghost can leave its anchoring object briefly. A Red Coat can leave its anchoring object for extended periods and even find something new to serve as an anchor—that was how I used to distinguish between different tiers of ghosts." Chen Ge watched as the Shadow drew closer. "But that method no longer applies above the Red Coat tier. Dr. Gao said he smelled an aura beyond Red Coat on the Shadow, so what's the difference between ghosts above Red Coat and Red Coats themselves? The gap in power between them should be even larger than the gap between an ordinary ghost and a Red Coat."
Red Coats and ordinary ghosts were easy to tell apart—that distinctive red coat was the most obvious marker. But what separated ghosts above the Red Coat tier from ordinary Red Coats?
"The Shadow could at best be considered a top-tier Red Coat. Only after the Nether Fetus's true body is born would he become a complete being above Red Coat." Chen Ge noticed some problems with the Shadow as well. "That infant on the Shadow's chest is devouring his body. He's using himself as sustenance for the infant in exchange for power beyond what he can bear. And that infant, though it looks perfectly ordinary, gives me an extremely bad feeling—staring at it is like staring at that evil spirit pattern on the door of my haunted house."
Dr. Gao, on the verge of being exposed, had bet everything on one desperate gamble. He sacrificed several living people, gouged out their eyes, and left an evil spirit pattern on the bathroom door of Chen Ge's haunted house.
"That evil spirit might also be a being above the Red Coat tier." Thinking it over carefully, there were many suspicious things within the Paranormal Society—for instance, the wooden box stained with black blood. The reason Zhang Ya had been able to grow so rapidly was largely because of the black blood she had seized from a Society member's hands.
That black blood was entirely different from the blood on Dr. Gao's body, which was contaminated by curses and stained black—it was a pure, absolute black.
Even sealed inside a box, one could still feel the staggering resentment contained within.
"Could Dr. Gao have been trying to lure some monster above the Red Coat tier behind that door in the haunted house?" Chen Ge couldn't figure out the purpose of the evil spirit pattern. The only person who knew the truth, who had orchestrated the whole design, had gone mad. Whether the current situation was good or bad, Chen Ge couldn't tell.
"If some monster above Red Coat really does show up, there's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is keep increasing the number of haunted house employees and make them stronger."
"If Zhang Ya breaks through as well, all the problems will be solved. But the gap between Red Coat and above Red Coat is enormous—even the Shadow spent more than a decade to complete his transformation. For Zhang Ya to become a being above Red Coat, I feel like something is still missing."
Zhang Ya's rate of growth had already reached an inconceivable speed. Once her strength had been comparable to the female ghost of Living Coffin Village; now she had most likely left that well ghost far behind.
"Zhang Ya must have her own secrets too. I've always treated her with genuine sincerity, but the truth is I don't know that much about her."
A violent crash pulled Chen Ge back from his thoughts. Curse-laden black blood splattered in all directions, and strands of black hair wrapped around him.
"Binding, Gluttony, Heart-link, Pain, Sharpness… How does one person possess so many abilities?"
Protected by Zhang Ya's black hair, Chen Ge heard the Shadow's voice: "He just mentioned 'Sharpness,' didn't he?"
Gluttony was the ability of the Red Coat female ghost from the restaurant. Zhang Ya had devoured her heart, so possessing the Gluttony ability was understandable.
Binding was likely Zhang Ya's own innate ability, which fit her personality. The fact that she had always used her black hair was probably her maximizing that ability to its fullest.
Zhang Ya had also devoured the twin children of the devil-man from the Paranormal Society. Heart-link might have been obtained from those twins, which would explain why Zhang Ya could hear Chen Ge's inner thoughts—she may have connected her heart to his back then.
But the remaining two abilities left Chen Ge perplexed. Pain, judging by its name, should be related to Xu Yin—and Xu Yin had only just broken through to Red Coat. That ability was probably something even Xu Yin himself didn't fully understand yet. How could Zhang Ya have it too?
Sharpness belonged to the headless female ghost from Little Bu's neighbor's house. She had been dismembered, and her dying obsession gave the blood threads at her neck this particular ability.
To confirm whether Zhang Ya had secretly devoured the headless ghost, Chen Ge deliberately opened his comic album to check. The headless female ghost was still inside, perfectly intact—her body wasn't missing anything, though she did look remarkably docile.
"The headless female ghost is a Red Coat I plan to recruit into the haunted house. Xu Yin is also one of my haunted house employees, obeying my commands. Could Zhang Ya be acquiring other Red Coats' abilities through me?" Chen Ge's jaw dropped—he found it almost impossible to believe.
"The abilities the Shadow spoke of should correspond to all the special abilities listed in the Black Phone. If the Shadow can see through every Red Coat's abilities, then could his own special ability be Insight?"
This was the first time Chen Ge had ever heard the term "abilities." He felt the Shadow might have misjudged this time—Zhang Ya couldn't possibly possess that many abilities. She simply had, in addition to the obvious Binding ability, another deeply hidden one.
Zhang Ya had her own dedicated page on the Black Phone. Chen Ge had initially assumed this was exclusive to Red Coats, but once Xu Yin fully became a Red Coat, he realized things weren't quite what he'd thought.
Even after Xu Yin turned into a Red Coat, he only occupied a single line on the employee page, with his name changed to blood-red.
"Obsessions possess almost no special abilities. Among ghosts, a very small fraction have special abilities—they are rare and invaluable finds. Red Coats, however, always possess special abilities, though the number varies. Strength can't be measured purely by the count of abilities. Following this logic, what kind of abilities might beings above Red Coat have?"
Chen Ge was trying to speculate about abilities above Red Coat, but in truth he was also thinking about how to reach that tier as quickly as possible. The deadline for the Four-Star trial mission—the Spirit Medium School—was fast approaching. At just three-and-a-half-star difficulty he had nearly met his end. Entering a true Four-Star scenario would almost certainly mean a situation where survival was impossible.
"The three-and-a-half-star scenario didn't contain any beings above Red Coat, but traces of them were everywhere. If that's any indication, true ghosts above the Red Coat tier might appear in Four-Star scenarios."
Chen Ge drew a deep breath. His city was teeming with strange tales, but even in such an extraordinary place, there were only three known Four-Star horror scenarios.
In other words, the entire city likely held only three beings above the Red Coat tier. They were this city's deepest secrets. They represented the night itself.